FRAGMENTAL – UPDATE 1

We hope you’re all enjoying the game, and to make sure you continue to have fun with it, we’ve just made Update 1 live on Steam.

Read below for some information on what we’ve added, what we’ve updated since we released the game last month.

The new content in Update 1 is focused on Weapons, Modifiers and some much needed UI and HUD improvements.

New Weapons

Sniper Rifle

Fires a line of laser-like death that will bounce off any part of the environment it hits. It’s an instant shot, so there is no projectile to fly through the air towards the target. As soon as you fire the target you hit will be taken out.

There’s pretty much nowhere for your enemies to hide when you have the Sniper Rifle. The only thing it doesn’t do is fire through Teleporters, but we may add that ability in a future update.

100% Played For

Triple Bouncer

Jammy Jammerson

Spammy Spammerson

Assault Rifle

Fires a burst of 5 bullets in a very short space of time, followed by a brief pause. Very little bullet spread, and the bullets fly faster than any other Weapon other than the instant Sniper Rifle.

What it lacks in fire rate, it makes up for in accuracy and bullet speed. So if your aim is good, even a target at the far end of a level is under serious risk of near instant death.

Lightning Fast Bullets

First Shot Counts

Mine Launcher

The Mine Launcher fires up to 8 Mines, which stick to the environment or the Character they hit. They are proximity Mines, but they don’t instantly explode when triggered, after a very short delay they eject a Homing Rocket which will track the target that triggered the Mine.

Placed Mines will automatically trigger after 6 seconds, and they will trigger for any Character, regardless who dropped them, so be careful you don’t drop them in your path.

The Perfect Trap

Taking The Bait

New Modifiers

Black Ice

This drastically reduced the amount of friction on any floor surface, making it very difficult to control your heading. The faster you move, the more momentum you will build up, making it very difficult to slow your slide and come to a stop.

Triggering the Black Ice Modifier on Maps which have holes or cliff edges can create total havoc.

Reverse Runner

This Modifier inverts the player movement controls, but not their aiming controls. Sounds pretty straightforward, but it can throw off even the most skilled of Fragmental players.

Similar to Black Ice, triggering the Reverse Runner Modifier on Maps with holes and cliff edges can create a lot of suicide, but it will create confusion and potentially give you the edge on any Map.

We can’t really show the Modifiers in motion – which is why we don’t have videos to show them off in game – this is purely because they’re all about input and control changes, so you need to feel them rather than just see them to understand exactly what they’re doing.

New Modifier Messaging

After adding the two new Modifiers – which can seriously screw you up if you’re not paying attention – we realised that we would need to inform the Player when a Modifier was picked up. So, we’ve added some new messaging for Modifiers.

The intention is to give everyone a warning that a – potentially dangerous – Modifier has been triggered – like the Black Ice.

When a Modifier is picked up, the icon pings from the position it was picked up from and scales up to the extents of the screen. This practically smacks you in the face if you’re simply watching others play, but if you’re actually in the game and focused on your targets, it’s just enough to catch your eye and give you pause.

Just before a Modifier is deactivated an audio sample “Modifier Deactivated” is played, which gives Players the warning that the – once again potentially dangerous – Modifier is about to turn off – like the Reverse Runner.

New UI

We updated the End of Round and End of Match score boards.

We created new artwork which is more in keeping with the Front End artwork.

We slide the scoreboard and text panels on and off screen to add a bit of ceremony to each too.

New End of Round Transitions

When a Round ends, we fade in a background image which serves two purposes.

It allows the End of Round / End of Match scoreboards to stand out more from the Map in the background.

It allows us to swap out the Map in the background without feeling like a glitch – basically adding a bit of polish to the Map transitions.

We still have some work to do to hide Characters, Weapons and Modifiers from appearing and disappearing, which will be fixed in a future update.

New Lobby Functionality

Players can now define their name using a classic arcade style 3 letter name.

This 3 letter name is then used to represent each Player in each of the 4 corners during a Round, on the End of Round Scoreboard, as well as the Map intro ping to show where each Player is located.

We’re not going to list all of the bugs we’ve fixed or you’d have an even longer scroll to get through, but we will list all of gameplay tweaks that will make a difference to your game experience.

Weapon Updates

SMG

Increased fire rate to make it run out of ammo faster.

It had felt a little overpowered before, it’s still incredibly dangerous, but the speed your run out of ammo balances this initial danger..

Homing Launcher

Increased projectile speed to be closer to the Player at full Sprint Speed carrying a Pistol.

We wanted the Homing Launcher to be a little more dangerous if you simply tried to outrun the Rockets – and we’ve succeeded.

Shotgun

Projectiles increased in speed to be faster than the Flak Gun.

We felt the Shotgun was simply a poor version of the Flak Gun. It’s now got the edge over the Flak Gun in a straight fight, but loses that edge if line of sight is blocked. This feels like a good balance to us.

Driller

Increased ammo from 3 to 4.

Quite simply, we love this Weapon and wanted the Player to have one more shot with each one.

Redeemer

Slightly increased projectile speed to be closer to the Player at full Sprint Speed carrying a Pistol.

We wanted there to be a little more danger to a Player trying to outrun the Redeemer in a straight line. Job done.

Pistol

Accuracy increased and projectile speed increased to be faster than the Machinegun.

We wanted to beef the Pistol up a little to ensure it’s a dangerous Weapon in the right hands. It’s definitely meeting that demand now.

Melee Updates

The Melee code was rewritten to make it move under physics rather than animation driven movement. This helped in various different ways.

The momentum of the Player can now be retained when performing an attack while running or sprinting – this makes the combat feel less stop and start when using Melee.

The physical connection with your desired target is now far more consistent – you can still slide through each other if you’re too close, but if you have the correct distance apart, you will always hit your target now.

The rate at which you can perform a Melee attack has also been increased and made consistent.

Thrown Weapon Updates

Like Melee, Thrown Weapons were completely rewritten to make them work in the way we had originally intended.

They will now fly from one side of the level to the other at a constant speed and not land on the ground – before this update your Weapon would tend to land flat on the ground a few metres from where you were standing.

The Thrown Weapon can now fly over any half height walls, and hit a target behind them – before they would tend to actually hit the half height wall.

You can now use a Thrown Weapon to defend yourself from projectiles as they will collide and break apart, taking out the projectile in the process.

You can also shoot a Thrown Weapon out of the air to avoid it hitting you.

See Ya Dave!

HUMILIATION!

Modifier Icon Updates

The Slow Motion Modifier icon has been changed to look less like the Camera Rotate Modifier icon.

Map Updates

DON’T LOOK DOWN

A fairly substantial update to the Map. The overall flow is the same, but the paths have been widened and the number of obstacles have been reduced, as well as making each of the corners a closer reflection of each other.

RAT RACE

Improved Player and Weapon spawn positions, as some gave Players an unfair advantage, it’s a much better balance now.

General Updates

The delay that was on the Infinite Ammo Modifier has now been removed.

Fixed a number of texture mapping issues on the walls and floors of the Maps.

Improved performance by optimising the materials we were using on the environment.

Player 1 used to be able to start a new game too quickly during the Match End scoreboard, which could cause some audio issue if the next Match was triggered too early, we’ve added a short delay to avoid that happening.

Known issues

We’re still in Early Access so we will obviously still have a fair few issues, but the main one we want to point out right now is that the new pre-game Lobby can’t be navigated with mouse & keyboard, its controller only for now – rest assured that we will sort this out in a future update.

That’s quite a lot to take in, but if anyone has any questions about any of this, add them to the Steam Discussions board and we’ll do our best to get back to you as quickly as possible.